Stay safe, stay hygienic, and ensure social distancing.
These three phrases have become a mantra for the past several months. Rather, unfortunately. The unprecedented Covid-19 challenges have changed the operations of many industries, particularly the hotel and hospitality industry, and of course, healthcare. Restaurants, pubs, nightclubs, cafes’ and hotels are changing quickly to adapt to the new guidelines set by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the food service industry.
While the change can affect the industry’s revenues, the simple QR Code technology can help you save a lot of cost and effort in going digital and maintaining social distancing.
Go Touchless, Use Digital Menus and Disposable Cutleries in Hotels and Restaurants
The CDC has strictly asked restaurants and foodservice businesses to use the touchless menu, besides using disposable cutleries and encouraging takeaways and home delivery. Touchless (or contactless) or disposable menus will ensure social distancing and prevent contamination and virus transmission risks, which is impossible with traditional menus.
With the help of QR Codes, you can create touchless menus without boring a hole in your pockets. While digital menu boards and use-and-throw menus are good alternatives, they can be expensive. Small-scale restaurant owners cannot afford these, especially when the pandemic has impacted our economy negatively.
Why Touchless Menu QR Codes is Need of the Hour
We have to reduce the possibilities of infection transmissions in all accounts. Unfortunately, menus and napkins are the biggest carriers of the infection. In fact, in research, Good Morning America found that restaurant menus contain more than 10x times more microbes (an avg. of 1,85,000 bacteria on the surface of menus) than the toilets.
QR Codes Touchless Menu ensures social distancing and keeps customers at safe distances while engaging them at a better level.
QR Codes not only can help you follow the Covid-19 CDC guidelines but also provide several opportunities to engage walk-ins as well as customers at home.
Here’s How QR Codes Work
QR Codes are quick response codes generated online. They are black and white shapes of white noises with four squares on each side. The codes are evolved and prettier versions of the traditional barcodes, which can store more information in different formats. They include website URLs and PDFs or anything that can connect your customer from the physical world to the online world.
When it comes to the touchless menu – while you can ask your consumers to type your website address or visit your Facebook page to access the menu, it is a tedious process. People can make mistakes while typing your URL or may not find your menu on Facebook or Instagram, or may simply get bored midway, considering our short attention span.
This can lead to frustration and, eventually, customer loss.
That won’t happen with QR Codes. Because here’s how it works:
- You embed your menu (be it stored on the website, a PDF document, JPEG. Image file, or on social media) into the QR Code
- Encourage your customer to scan the code using their smartphone camera
- The customer scans the code and is redirected to the link on the internet where the menu is updated
- They are either asked to download it on their phone or view it online to place an order
- They open it, go through it, and place orders. If the page is linked to a contact button, they can directly place the order.
Smartphone cameras can easily scan QR Codes, and since most of us have access to smartphones, this shouldn’t be a problem.
How Can You Change Your Existing Menu into QR Code?
This depends upon how you have your menu stored on the internet.
Most restaurants, as of now, have their websites up and running. But if you don’t have a website, just don’t fret yet, as we have other ways to link menus to QR Codes.
While an HTML website menu proves to be the most beneficial for marketing, a PDF menu or a link to an image posted on Facebook or Instagram will also address the purpose.
Just for the sake of creating a touchless menu, don’t develop a website from scratch. This is because a lot goes into developing websites, and you have to keep in mind its responsiveness and SEO factor as well.
Once you have a digital version of the menu, it is time to link it to the QR Code.
QR Code Generator allows you to generate instant, beautiful QR Codes for the restaurant menu.
5 Step Process to Generate QR Code Menu
Go to QR Code Generator for Menu and follow the instructions below to create your online menu:
1. Design and customize your Menu display page with colors and background images.
2. Add your menu images under the Image Upload section.
3. Enter the basic information details you wish to display.
4. Click on ‘Design Color and Decorate QR Code’ to customize your QR Code design (ex: adding color, shape, menu sticker).
Note: Click on the ‘x’ icon of the ‘Customize QR Code’ popup to save changes.
5. Save the QR Code by clicking on the ‘Save QR Code’ button, entering the QR name, and then clicking on ‘Save.’
Note: Make sure to scan your QR Code from different mobile phones (iOS and Android) before printing for production.
Once the QR code is saved, you can download it and use it on your print materials.
QRCodeChimp can also help generate Dynamic QR Codes, allowing restaurants to use the same QR Code to link up different menus (based on happy hours, days of the week, and special menus) umpteen times without having to reprint the code.
Log into QRCodeChimp and go through the directions to download a perfect, HD quality, printable QR Code for a touchless menu.
